


Drabbles and Short Works

by Elisif



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 16:06:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1989213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisif/pseuds/Elisif
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A compilation places for Silmarillion related prompts, drabbles and shorter pieces.</p><p>1.  Unfair- Húrin and Huor as young children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drabbles and Short Works

**Author's Note:**

> This was envisioned as the opening of a short novella detailing the childhoods of Húrin and Huor. Unfortunately, said envisioning took place on a plane based on memory alone and when I eventually regained access to my copies of the Narn and the Silmarillion I realised I had based the entire plot around killing off Haldor a good 12 years BC (before canon), which explains the rather extreme AU and fragmentary nature of this piece.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Húrin and Huor as young children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was envisioned as the opening of a short novella detailing the childhoods of Húrin and Huor. Unfortunately, said envisioning took place on a plane based on memory alone and when I eventually regained access to my copies of the Narn and the Silmarillion I realised I had based the entire plot around killing off Haldor a good 12 years BC (before canon), which explains the rather extreme AU nature of this piece.

He was seven years older, riding to meet the Eldar and wearing armour for the first time in his life, and thoroughly unimpressed by the experience. The helmet he had practically leapt to accept from his uncles was far too large for him, the cold and heavy metal clunking uncomfortably against the base of his scalp in time to the kinder swayings of his pony. His tooled riding-gloves were likewise intended for someone far bigger than him; only by clenching his fingers against the rough, sand-textured leather until they cramped, straining knuckle and fingertip as far apart as possible in their vastness could he prevent them from slipping off, and that made holding onto the reigns difficult. That however, wasn’t a problem, because they had insisted that he ride at the back of the party where a close eye could be kept on him, his reigns seized hold of should his mount bolt or some other accident befall him, while his brother rode at the front with their uncle on Father’s horse.

It wasn’t fair. Father had promised them both Elven steeds if they ever grew tall enough to ride them, but now Father was gone and Húrin had Father’s Destrier even though he was no taller than Huor and the steed so large he couldn’t mount it without Uncle Hador lifting him up by the armpits like a baby, and even then his legs stuck stupidly out to the side of the saddle. Húrin had Father’s sword too, and his other weapons, and what of his armour had been salvaged after. Older brothers got things regardless of whether or not they ever actually grew big enough for them, it seemed.

He had always been told to wait until he grew up to get things, to wait for everything, but two months ago the pall of smoke that had been on the horizon for as long as Huor could remember had lifted, and in its place had come riders with the silken banners of a new King in their hands and news of tidings beyond the scarlet horizon that to Huor marked the end of the known world. Húrin had pried apart the strips of the loft’s one ox-horn window-hole with his dagger in eagerness to see the riders approach, but their aunt’s maidservant caught them in the act, scolded them fiercely for the damaged window and sent them straight to bed in punishment.

Húrin’s preferred manner of sleep was to luxuriantly sprawl across the pallet and push Huor over until he had no choice but to precariously cling to the threadbare edge of his small share of blanket, so the jarring absence of Húrin’s elbow on his face or hot breath against his neck when he next awoke that night after falling asleep in sullen silence had sufficed to drag him bleary-eyed from fitful sleep; he had known something was deeply wrong even ere he opened his eyes and saw Húrin kneeling on the floor in his nightshirt and scrabbling through the trampled pine needles and muddied thresh with his bare hands.

When Húrin’s shaking finger fingers finally located a suitable crack in the loft floor, Huor had joined him in pressing his cheek and ear against the splintering floorboards and listened with baited breath to the muffled voices below.

Five arrows to the throat, they had overheard, dead ere he knew what had struck him, already five months mourned and the ground in which he had five months lain buried long thawed.

Húrin had leapt all the way from the top step of the ladder, run sobbing at the messenger and beat his fists against his the vast stranger’s gilded doublet till his knuckles bled raw and he collapsed, still begging him to deny that it was so.

Huor had buried himself in the pelts that he mere minutes before had longed to have all to himself and clutched the furs over his ears so he would not have to hear his brother cry.

When he next spoke to Húrin the following day- he had feigned sleep when one of the squires had carried his brother, slumped sobbing over his shoulder back up to the loft- his eyes were a dark red, and when he suggested they play at being heroes like they had only yesterday, they had turned darker still.

“I don’t want to play at being a hero anymore,” he had announced, jumping up from the log where he had been sitting and throwing aside the stick he been drawing angrily through the dirt, “I want to be one.”

He then announced that he was going off into the birch grove to train – not practice-spar as they did under their uncle’s supervision, not play as they did when they were alone, but train like one of the grown warriors– and stormed off.

Normality returned somewhat when Uncle Hador found him not long afterwards, laid his huge hands on Huor’s shoulders, then lifted him into up his vast embrace with his characteristic teasing comments that Huor was far too old to be carried, but for the first time, to Huor’s disappointment, he didn’t affirm the opinion that older brothers were more trouble than they were worth, and that they would both have been better off without them anyway.

Instead, having laid a scratchy kiss on his cheek as he carried him back towards the stables, he told him:

“I’ll let you in on a secret, Huor. Come summer, we’ll be taking you and your brother to Eithel Sirion, where you can begin training to be warriors properly, you and Húrin both.”

But they weren’t both warriors, because Húrin had father’s horse and a real sword and Huor had only their uncle’s old dented helmet and leather breastplate, and his own little bone dagger that he’d had for as long as he could remember anyway.


End file.
